Jim knew it was a gamble, but he took Reese home.

“What’s this?” Reese asked as she climbed out of the Mustang. No, as she oozed out.

All the stress she’d been showing at RTC until he was afraid to touch her for fear she might shatter had fallen away during the short drive in her Mustang. If he didn’t get her out of that suit and into his bed in short order, he was the one who was going to shatter. But he knew a frontal attack wasn’t going to win the day, so he’d just follow her lead.

“Home. Not much, but I like it.” The way she’d eased down from her drive was exactly how this place always affected him. He’d sunk the money from selling his rig and being a good boy with six years of banking his Army pay to buy five acres just a half hour outside of DC and ten minutes from the Rowley Training Center.

Malcolm hopped down and ran around to see if any deer or rabbits had passed through since this morning’s run.

It had been all trees. He’d hacked an acre-sized hole right out of the middle and parked his fifth wheel along the north edge so that he looked out on the sunny yard. A small stream ran at the far edge of the wide lawn.

“Got a nice wood deck on the southern side,” he led Reese around to it. “Should be warm this time of day.”

Reese kicked one of the tires on his fifth wheel as she walked by. “This thing ever move or are you like most RV owners who should just build a damn home?”

“Every vacation and the occasional weekend. Malcolm and I like wandering the backroads. Done a whole lot of Maryland and Virginia. Thinking to start Pennsylvania next. Hoping to do the original thirteen colonies, but really see them, not just the highways I drove back in my trucking days.”

“That explains the big-ass truck,” Reese muttered to herself.

“Have yourself a sit and I’ll go rustle up some sandwiches,” he waved toward the two loungers he had out on the back deck. He’d glassed in the sides to stop any wind. He had an awning he could run out, but rarely did—he preferred looking at the sky and the stars even when it got cold.

He headed inside and Reese came in on his heels. She prowled through the place, which didn’t take long. There was the big bed up in the nose of the fifth wheel. The dividing wall that made it a bedroom had dressers below and a built-in big-screen TV above that could be spun on a swivel to face either the bedroom or the living room. One side of the living room had a two-burner cooktop, small fridge, and oven. The rig’s only pop-out was the living room, which allowed for a big sofa and a couple of lounger chairs. Toward the back was a bathroom and shower all-in-one, and a four-person dining booth that mostly served as his desk. There was a small outside swingout for a grill and a small storage bin that he kept stocked with wood for campfires.

“Not much, but all a man really needs.” He began fishing out sandwich fixings.

Watching Reese prowl through the place was making it hard to concentrate. It had been a long time since a woman had been here. Maybe not since Margarite, and the contrast was startling.

Margarite had accepted that this RV and this property represented who he was—and that it wasn’t her. She’d never really relaxed out here. Or around him, he supposed.

Reese filled the space with her presence as if she somehow belonged. She stood in the middle of the living room staring out at the lawn, backed by Loblolly pines and red oak trees, through the sliding glass door. She just seemed to soak it in. He knew that even if she never came back, it would take him a long time to get over looking at her standing there.

He concentrated on the sandwiches for all he was worth. He hoped that she liked the way he made them, because his mouth was too dry to even ask if she liked horseradish on her roast beef.

“Are you planning to look me in the eye anytime soon?”

He froze. He’d looked at her driving, at her hot car, at her in his rearview to make sure he didn’t lose her on the way here.

“Seems kinda lousy of me not to, doesn’t it?”

“It does.”

“There’s a problem though,” he got his hands moving again. He finished the sandwiches, scrounged up a bag of chips that wasn’t too decimated, and a pair of Cokes.

“What’s that?”

“Look you in the eye, as likely as rain at a summer picnic, I’m gonna want to be kissing you.”

That earned him silence.

Well, no guts, no glory. He turned slowly and looked at her. Those dark, mysterious eyes were watching him closely. Well, he’d been right. Even that brow-knitting expression she was wearing didn’t change a thing. Three steps. That’s all it would take, just three measly steps separated them.

“Even after the shit way I’ve been pushing you away all week?”

“Even after.” He wasn’t going to admit how much that pushing off had scared him—not even to himself was he going to be admitting that.

“Still feeling that way?”

“Seems I am.” It was all he could do to not drop down on the carpet and drag her down with him.

“Dilya asked me if we were after the Meryton Hall dance or the Nettingfield Ball.”

“Netherfield.”

“She didn’t explain herself.”

“It means that either you’ve decided I’m a prideful jerk or that I’m actually dashingly handsome and alluring despite my vastly superior station in society.”

“You walk a dog for a living,” Reese rolled her eyes, but the frown had eased off to that cryptic partial smile of hers.

“You’re nothing but a fancy chauffeur. Maybe we’re in the wrong story.”

“Not according to Dilya. So what’s your role after the two dances?”

“Oh, I’m utterly fascinated by you either way, I’m just too shy to say so.”

Reese finally laughed a little. “Shy isn’t one of your problems. Being too nice might be one of them.”

“Definitely the wrong story, then. So let’s eat.” Jim turned and picked up the sandwiches. He wasn’t turning aside from the obvious path because he was too nice. Some instinct told him that going fast was going to make it “race over” way too soon.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her stumble a half step forward as he walked away. He hoped that was a good sign.

Out on the back deck, some part of Reese’s sanity returned. She’d been within a moment of shoving Jim into that bedroom of his. It was right there, conveniently mere steps away. A man cave of dark woods and a big screen TV. Use his body, then leave him watching some ESPN.

She just wanted to lose herself in mind-blurring sex. Let a cathartic release help her forget, even for a moment, what Miss Watson had forced her to see.

Instead they were sitting on side-by-side loungers in the warm sunshine. The tall pines and oaks gave the property an other-worldly feel. It didn’t seem possible that all the worries of DC lay so nearby.

Malcolm came back from his explorations, begged some roast beef from both of them, then curled up on a dog bed Jim had set close by his lounger.

The quiet of the place expanded, emphasized by the birdsong from the trees and even the quiet trickling of the distant brook, until it made her ears ring. Her apartment was in Friendship Heights and she’d forgotten what the country sounded like.

Jim knew that about her and simply ate. But it wasn’t as if he wasn’t there. Instead, her awareness of him grew and grew until it seemed as big or even bigger than the trap she’d fallen into.

“Get many visitors here?” Reese could hear cars, but they were so distant that she didn’t hear them unless she was listening for them.

“Deer and rabbit. Got some moles over in the southeast corner that Malcolm catches on occasion. Had a coyote come through once. Raccoons come along to fish in the stream during the summer.” His voice had a soft smoothness that made him easy to listen to but hard to keep track of the words. He was definitely talking about another world if those were his “visitors.”

She considered as she took another bite of her sandwich. There was a very nice looking bed not ten feet away. But the sun-warmed deck and the canopy of blue sky were—

Jim reached across the gap between their loungers and took her hand. When she turned to meet his eyes, he was looking right at her. Not with a question, but with a need that she discovered she was sharing. At the slightest tug, she abandoned her seat and straddled over him.

Sensations jolted into her, even though they were both fully dressed.

“You doing something to me, Fischer?”

“Planning to, Carver.”

It wasn’t what she meant, but she leaned down to kiss him and decided to see how his plan went first—because all of hers were awful.

Reese Carver in a darkened hotel room had been fantastic.

Reese Carver straddling him and silhouetted against the blue sky was a revelation. He opened her jacket and blouse, then blessed a front-opening bra. Every curve of her chocolate skin looked as perfect as it had felt. He filled his hands with her and still wanted more.

When she leaned forward and lay her bare chest against him, it was liking hitting that home run ball—just ever so sweet, knowing it was right and clean even before it soared aloft.

He tried to never make comparisons between women, but Margarite had never wanted to do it outdoors. She’d been a DC woman with DC aspirations. They hadn’t even done it on the couch very often. With Reese it seemed as if everything was irrelevant other than their two bodies coming together.

When she disengaged long enough to shuck her pants, he saw that the wonder of her didn’t end at her waist. She still wore jacket, blouse, and disengaged bra as she helped him shed his jeans and sheathed him before she moved back over him. Her sidearm in its shoulder harness rubbed the back of his knuckles as he once more marveled at the feel of her breasts and the contrast of his light hands on her dark skin.

Sliding into Reese was better than backing a double-trailer rig in a dead straight line. She moved against him with a rhythm all her own as her fingers dug into his shoulders. Her long hair slid from its ponytail and fell around them like a private curtain against the world. Only at the very last did her eyes slide shut, but he was unable to look away from the wonder of her. The line of her arching neck the moment before the release slammed into her and had her hunching to absorb the force of it when it arrived. The taste of her moan as he dragged their lips together before his own wild release had him arching up against her as if he could somehow bring them closer together.

Together.

Jim had never felt so together with a woman in his entire life. This was a woman that he could never tire of. It wasn’t that she brought a new and unfamiliar spice to sex—although she did. It was that… Jim didn’t know what. What he did know was that he was permanently ruined for any other woman.

When Reese finally eased down against him, he could only marvel at the warmth and softness of this “hard” woman. Though the butt of her FN Five-seveN sidearm digging into his armpit argued the point the other way. He managed to slide it free and lower it to the deck.

She curled against him, burying her face in the crook of his neck.

He ran his hands up and down her back under her clothes. At first it felt as if she was merely snuggling. But he knew what a snuggling woman felt like and this wasn’t it.

Somehow he was holding the “hard” woman again, even as she lay so completely against him. Reese was holding herself rigidly. As rigidly as he expected she’d been while putting The Beast through paces that no one else had ever seen before.

“Something you want to be talking about, Reese?”

She shook her head sharply enough to nearly bruise his jaw.

Maybe if he just held her a long while, she’d find what she needed—and he didn’t mind that solution at all.

His bare legs were getting cold despite the warm sun. When he ran his hands down over her bare behind, it was covered in goosebumps. He tried chaffing her skin and it earned him a snort of laughter.

“If we don’t move soon, you’re gonna freeze the Secret Service’s finest ass…et,” he teased her.

It earned him a soft thump on the ribs, but then she unwound herself from him. She started reaching for her clothes, even holding her jacket closed, and he didn’t like that at all. He scrambled to his feet, scooped up all of their clothes, and headed inside. Bare-assed, she followed, then doubled back for her sidearm.

He turned for the bedroom, dumped their clothes on the floor, shrugged off the few bits he was still wearing, and slid between the covers.

Reese stopped in the doorway and looked down at him—one hand holding her jacket closed and the other holding her sidearm. The hem of the jacket and blouse danced along her hips.

“You expecting something more, Okie?”

“Don’t mind being comfortable while we’re talking.”

“Talking?” Reese eyed him skeptically.

“Talking. Oh, I got no more complaints than a tornado in a trailer park if you want to just have more sex, but I’m thinking that something’s eating at you and this is as good a place as any to do the talkin’.” He liked her smile when he really laid on the accent. Something about it worked on women and he wasn’t the complaining type.

She hesitated for a long moment, then sighed. With a single shrug, she shed all the layers off her shoulders at once and stood like a black Madonna—an armed black Madonna.

Reese slid the sidearm under the other pillow and tucked into the bed beside him without a single point of contact.

“Now that ain’t no way to be talkin’.” He pulled her in until she lay against him with her head on his shoulder and her leg over his hips. He began toying with her hair. “By the way, you ever cut this and I’m throwin’ you out with the dog.”

“You don’t lose that accent and I might do some cutting myself.” She lifted her leg and slid her hand down around him to indicate precisely where she’d be trimming things.

“Whatever you say, ma’am.”

She growled a little but left him intact, resting her palm once more against the center of his chest. Again she let the silence stretch a long time and he could feel her gathering her thoughts like the air gathering its strength. He just hoped that he survived the tornado when Reese unleashed it.

“Can I trust you? How can I trust you? And I’m not talking about sex.”

“Didn’t think you were,” though he’d bet it would be easier if she was. “Always figured that had to be earned. Malcolm and I do our best to do that.”

And somehow that made a difference. Malcolm clearly trusted Jim for everything and Jim had won that trust through action and kindness.

“I’m in trouble.”

She’d never understand how Jim’s silence always helped her along. She’d always depended on men to pry out what they needed to know, because it was far safer to keep the rest to herself. But Jim simply waited for her own thoughts to form until she was ready to give them a voice.

“What if the attack in New York wasn’t an accident?”

“Didn’t think it was.”

“What if it wasn’t an attack either?”

“But—” then he stopped for a long moment. “A trial run?”

“That’s what I thought at first. Then Miss Watson suggested—”

“Who?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Reese wondered just how few people knew about the spy in the White House basement. “What if it was a test?”

“A test,” Jim rolled it over his tongue like he was tasting it. “A test of the Motorcade’s defenses?”

This time she decided to keep her thoughts to herself and pray that Jim didn’t reach the same scary conclusion she had.

“No. If it was a test, they were testing for something that they didn’t know. You. They wanted to test what you could do, because you’re what they don’t know about.”

She tried to stay perfectly still, to not give away her next thought. But she felt it along the entire length of their bodies lying together when the realization hit him.

“It’s an inside job,” he barely whispered it. “The truck wasn’t stolen until after the New York team was mobilized. And to have it in that place, at that precise moment… But the Secret Service never had a traitor before…” The way he tapered off said that he agreed that they did now.

And that was the moment that Reese knew she could completely trust Jim Fischer. They were lying too close together for his shocked reaction to be faked. And his first, instinctive reaction was to crush her against him as if he could somehow protect her by simply holding her close. As if he could take the bullet to spare her.

The last man to protect her unconditionally had died in a shattered stock car.

Since then she’d forgotten what it felt like—had always relied on herself alone.

Then Jim sealed the bargain with a whispered question.

“What are we going to do?”

We. Not her. We. She could definitely get to like the sound of that.